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"travel guide", "Food and drink" ], "publishingPrinciples": "https://above.guide/cambridge/editorial-policy" } ] } ], "editorialMarkdown": "[Back to things to do]()\n\nCambridge’s oldest pubs / an Above Guide story\n\n## The pubs that *outlasted everyone.*\n\nDated from the archives rather than from the sign above the door—which is not always the same number.\n\n01 / 06 **The River Inns**\n\nBefore you start\n\n### Two pubs claim to be oldest. Both are right.\n\nPub ages conflate two different things: how long there has been a licensed house on a plot, and how long the building in front of you has actually been a pub. In Cambridge that produces a genuine tie.\n\nThe Pickerel has the longer continuous licence, conventionally dated to 1608—but its Magdalene Street frontage is early 19th century, with only the rear wing Tudor. The Green Dragon at Chesterton has the older building, a timber-framed range the Royal Commission dated to the 16th century. Each is honestly the oldest, and they are answering different questions.\n\n**1 of the six** advertises a date its own record does not quite support. It is flagged on its card with what the sources actually show.\n\nI\n\nBuilt for the fair, not the colleges\n\n### The River Inns\n\n 1500–1599\n\nThe oldest survivors stand on the water rather than in the town — timber-framed ranges at Chesterton and on Midsummer Common, built to lodge merchants travelling to Stourbridge Fair and to serve the ferries that crossed the Cam. Both were outside Cambridge when they were built.\n\n 02 pubs\n\n[Visit Fort St George]()\n\n[Visit The Green Dragon]()\n\nII\n\nThe inn becomes a matter of record\n\n### The Licensed House\n\n 1600–1699\n\nThe century in which a pub’s age stops being tradition and starts being documented — a licence, a college lease, a name in an archive. Cambridge’s longest continuous licence dates from here, and the Eagle turns from a Tudor inn into a working coaching house.\n\n 02 pubs\n\n[Visit The Pickerel Inn]()\n\n[Visit The Eagle]()\n\nIII\n\nUp the hill and over the bridge\n\n### The Georgian Town\n\n 1700–today\n\nThe last of the six open away from the old centre — on Castle Hill where Roman and Norman Cambridge began, and on Bridge Street, the road north out of the town. Both date from the 1740s, and both outlived the river trade the railway later took away.\n\n 02 pubs\n\n[Visit The Castle Inn]()\n\n[Visit The Mitre]()\n\n1550—last orders\n\n### Six houses, and what is provable.\n\nDates checked against the Royal Commission’s Survey of Cambridge (1959) via Capturing Cambridge, Historic England listings, Corpus Christi College’s archive for the Eagle, and local pub history. Verified 29 July 2026.\n\nSix is where the record lands. Cambridge lost most of its medieval inns to conversion and redevelopment, so beyond these the archive thins out—and padding the list would mean inventing depth that is not there." }